


My Thoughts Be Bloody

by katkrap



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-10
Updated: 2012-08-10
Packaged: 2017-11-11 21:13:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katkrap/pseuds/katkrap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian Moran gets a phone call.  "Jim Moriarty is dead.  Sherlock Holmes is not." </p><p>(From the Tumblr "Shernanigans: Party When Dead" Prompt 3: Shakespeare; Hamlet)</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Thoughts Be Bloody

***

Sebastian Moran waited.

Safe House B, just like Jim told him. Just like he always did after a hit. He cleaned his guns and waited. He made coffee and waited. He smoked his way through two packs of the cigarettes and waited. Into the morning, then into the evening again, he waited.  Without sleep, without food or drink, but not without worry. Something was wrong.

It wasn't the  _length_  of time. It wasn't unlike Jim to change plans and disappear to Haiti for a month without so much as a,  _"ta, Sebby."_   It wasn't even the  _silence_. While it was unusual for Jim to be  _this_  quiet for  _this_  long—not so much as a text message—it wouldn't have been the first time. But that wasn’t it.  Whatever it was, he couldn't put his finger on it. All he knew was that this time, something had wrong.

And then something happened.  Something that should never have happened.

The old rotary phone on the kitchen counter rang.

He considered ignoring it, but there it was again. The  _nagging_ , pulling at the back of his skull hard enough to separate it from his spine. Not entirely certain what he expected, he picked up the receiver.

"Hello?"

The static that accompanies silence was all that could be heard on the other end of the line.

“Hello?” Sebastian repeated.

Nothing.

Sebastian sighed.  “Looks like you’ve the wrong number, mate—”

  
The voice that cut him off was distorted, run through a heavy digital filter. "Turn on your television set."

“What?”

“Turn on your television.”

Sebastian eyes narrowed at the wall. "Who is this?"

He could hear breathing on the other end of the line. Then a click, the monotone drone of the line gone dead.

Sebastian picked up the handgun on the table nearest him and chambered a round with one strong movement of his hand.  In that same moment, he was already across the room to the windows, slipping a finger between the shades.  Just enough of a sliver to peer outside.

Nothing but the fire escape, the bustle of London traffic below.

It wasn’t more than half a second that he looked, but it was long enough.  He moved to the second window on the far side.  It would take one hell of a shot and a damn good sniper to put a bead on him that quickly.  But he could make the shot.  And it he could, someone else could, too.  That was the first thing Jim had drilled into his mind:  there was no such of a thing as ‘too cautious.’  The only time Sebastian had forgotten, Jim had taken  _special_  care to make Sebastian remember.

At the second Window, Sebastian repeated the gesture, this time examining the building opposite the one he was lodging in.

Again, nothing.

Sebastian frowned, but kept the gun at a ready position.  His steps were silent on the carpet as he made his way to the front door. Once there, he checked and double-checked the four chains and three locks on the door, triple-checked the two deadbolts and the spare. Then he checked them a second time.

Everything was secure. So why that feeling?

It was the moment you were trapped underwater, the moment just before you ran out of air, before you’d try to breathe water.  The pressure in your chest, collapsing and bursting all at once.  The way your head didn’t feel right and your body felt sick.  That’s what this felt like.

 _Shake it off, Sebby,_  Jim’s voice rang in his head.   _Can’t be a thing wrong when there’s not a thing there._

Sebastian rolled back his shoulders, ejected the clip and removed the unfired round from the gun. He thumbed it into the magazine and flopped down onto the sofa with a sigh before setting both the gun and the mag on different ends of the table. Perhaps it was just the lack of sleep. Perhaps it was the fact that until Jim came round, he was flat out of diazepam.  Even as he lifted a cigarette to his mouth to light it, his hands were shaking.  He was going to be shit with a pistol until that smarmy bastard came round.  Whatever it was, Sebastian Moran was on edge. And he didn't like it.   
  
Without thinking of the call or the job or even Jim, his hand moved to the remote and he turned on the telly.  He flipped through the channels, flipping back when a single word caught his attention.

Brook.

It wasn’t like the moment before drowning.  Not anymore.  This?  This was drowning, it was being underwater where everything happening in colorless slow-motion and you didn’t have it in you to scream.  _"—body of Richard Brook was recovered from the roof of St. Bart's, where it is believed Brook and the fraudulent detective, Sherlock Holmes, had some sort of heated exchange which resulted in a gunshot to Brook’s head. It is assumed this confrontation took place shortly before Holmes took his own life. Jane Dawson is on the scene with more on the—"_

And just like that, time snapped back into place; faster, brighter, chlorine-colored like a migraine just starting to pulse at the back of his head. He picked up his mobile, dialed out.

It was ringing.

"Come on, Jim," he muttered.

It continued ringing.

Sebastian shook his head. "Come on.  Come on, pick up."

An answer. A woman’s voice. A recorded message.  "At the tone, please record your message for—" then the familiar voice of,  _"Jim Moriarty."_  A shrill beep.

Sebastian could have cracked the screen on his phone as his thumb jammed the button to end the call.  He took a deep breath, dialed out again. The phone rang.  And rang. "Come on, Jim.  Come  _on_ , you stupid git, you  _fucking_  arse, answer the  _sodding_  call, you fucking—"

"At the tone, please leave a message for--"

"Don't you dare, Jim," he snapped at the empty room, dialing again. It began ringing.  He slammed an open hand down on the table.  "Don't you  _fucking_  dare!  Answer me,  _you fucking—!"_

  
"At the tone—"

  
It took everything in Sebastian not to throw the phone against the wall, toss the coffee table leg-over-leg into the television set and empty a clip into the ceiling.  Instead, he just ended the call and set the phone on the table. He ran both hands over his face, pressed them together under his chin and stared at the ceiling.

This was a test. It had to be. They always were, five billions  _stupid_  tests that bloody psychopath ran him through, testing his limits.  He shut his eyes hard enough to make them ache from the pressure and forced himself to calm.  This wasn’t the first test, it wasn’t the last.  It was all about pressure points, and so far, Jim hadn’t found his.  Not yet.

He remembered nights spent bloody on the floor, breaking but not broken.

_"How much pressure do I have to apply to make you break, Sebby?"_

_“More than that, boss.”_

_“Mm… more, I have.”_

Sebastian kept nodding to himself, stood and went to the kitchen to pour himself a drink.  It was a test.  It had to be. 

***

It wasn’t a test.

He got a call from Scotland Yard.  His number had been listed as “next-of-kin” and “emergency contact” on the alias “Richard Brook’s” forms from an old desk job.  He was the only contact listed.  He was called down to the station confirm a body.

Violence didn’t frighten him.  Nor did gore.  He’d done plenty of work for Jim, and he’d seen worse.  Bodies didn’t shake him anymore.  What did shake him was the body of Jim Moriarty, lying on the hospital bed with half his skull missing.

He asked for a moment of privacy.

They obliged.

He checked for the birthmark at the back of his left heel, the freckle on his hip bone, the puckering of scars across the back and shoulders, the indent of the third nail on his right hand where he’d crushed his finger as a child, the dimple of a chickenpox scar on his cheek that never fully healed.

It was all there.  All of it.  Every imperfection, every flaw, grey and cold and unresponsive.

Sebastian thanked the doctors for their time, took a cab home and promptly drank every bottle of everything he could find in the house.  Then, picking up his shotgun, held it in his lap as he sat in the dark of Safe House B, considered it as the sun went down.  Pressed it under his chin when the sky went black.  Rested his finger on the trigger and spent a long ten minutes in silence, listening to his breathing and the sound of the refrigerator humming from the kitchen two rooms over.

Then the impossible happened again.

He didn’t move when the phone in the kitchen rang.  Didn’t bother looking in the direction of the noise.  Instead, he sat, metal pressed to the soft underside of his chin, thinking.  He barely listened as it rang on and on for minutes without end.  Finally, when he couldn’t be bothered to listen to it another minute, he set down the shot gun, rose from the sofa, and plodded off across the linoleum to pick up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Find Sherlock Holmes.”  It was the same distorted voice as the night before.

Sebastian’s hand tightened on the phone.  “Who the fuck is this?”

No response, just the crackle of static.

“Sherlock Holmes is dead,” he snapped.  “Call again and I  _will_  find you and I’ll—”

“Sherlock Holmes is alive,” the voice said.  “And Jim Moriarty is not.”

“Listen here, mate, I—”

"Find Holmes,” the voice on the other end snapped.  “Kill him.   _Properly_ .”

A click.  The line went dead.

This time Sebastian Moran did throw the phone across the room.  The plastic shattered on the wall as he sunk to the slick, plastic floor and covered his head with both hands, gripping as though it were all that was keeping it together.  An animal noise clawed over his tongue, past his teeth and his chest collapsed inward, heaving.

He lay on the floor of the kitchen for the better part of an hour, drinking away his grief.  Screaming at the ceiling.  But it didn’t go away.  It burned white-hot and changed to something else.

The next morning, Sebastian put away his guns and left the safehouse.

***

_"If something happens to me, you're going to have to take my calls."_

That’s what Jim had always told him.  He’d never tell him anything straight, not really. Not even that.  There was always a smirk, daring Sebastian to disagree.  Sebastian had always shrugged it off, or laughed it away, said he was no good with people.  That if anything ever happened—which it wouldn’t, not under his watch—the web would just… collapse.  Go away, and there would be no sign it had ever been there in the first place.  There was no chance someone like him would be able to balance all those stupid contacts and agents and…

Here he was.

It was like riding a bike.  You never forgot.  It was just like being in command again, all those men ready and willing to ask  _“how high?”_  the second you said  _“jump.”_   And the best part?  No one questioned him.

He was two months into his new life.  No one knew, or perhaps no one cared, that he wasn’t the real Jim Moriarty.  It was bigger than that, this web.  Moriarty wasn’t a person, it was an idea.  And now, he was the body that idea was possessing.

The money was good.  Better than good.  Twice as well as Jim had ever paid him.  But it wasn’t the money.  It kept him busy.  Busy enough his mind didn’t wander.  Busy enough to keep sane.  And right now, that was all Sebastian Moran cared about.

It was a sunny afternoon in a posh penthouse in Kensington and Sebastian was busy balancing one of their Swedish accounts while taking another message from one of his agents in Brazil.

That was when the doorbell rang.

Sebastian went to the computer, checked the security feed for the front door.  No one was there.  There was, however, a mailer folder set on top of the doormat.

After retrieving the package, unmarked save the address of the penthouse, Sebastian ran all the usual tests on it. Despite every precaution, it seemed to be just a normal mailer folder.

Taking the letter opener that looked like a small dagger from Jim’s old desk, Sebastian opened the package.

There was no note.  No preface.  Just a handful of polaroids, time stamped with yesterday’s date, just after midnight.

Sebastian felt his heart stop.  He spread the pictures out on the desk and murmured into the cellphone, “I’m going to need to call you back.”

He set the pictures out in front of him, sitting himself into the seat as he stared.

Five photographs.  Five shots just outside a bank in Switzerland; a coat collar turned up against the cold, a scarf windblown.  Just enough to make out someone who was beyond any shadow of a doubt—

“Sherlock Holmes,” Sebastian Moran whispered, picking up the clearest of the photographs.

He packed his guns that night, messaged every agent and handler that ‘Moriarty’ was going silent for a month.

He had to see a man about a fall.

***

Mycroft Holmes walked into the cool darkness of his private office, hesitated only a moment before realizing there was little point in running.  He tugged the string of the lamp, illuminating the figure sitting in the plush chair opposite his own.  He wore a suit.  Mycroft recognized the cut, the color scheme, but not the man.  Nor the rifle he had lying long across his lap.

Mycroft Holmes forced a smile, laid the day’s paper on the table next to the lamp.  “You must be Sebastian.”

“What gave it away?” the man asked.

“The rifle… for starters,” Mycroft said, slipping into his seat.  “And your eyes...  He did love to talk about your eyes.”

Sebastian felt his lip curl hard.  His hands were itchy on the rifle.  It would have been so easy to just…

Sebastian lifted his chin.  “Where is your brother, Mister Holmes?”

Mycroft chuckled, low and deep.  “Don’t you read the papers?  Watch television?”  His smile went bitter.  Distant.  “He’s  _dead_.”

“Dead?”

“Yes.  Going on six months now, and—”

A single shot and the air was filled with down feathers and the sharp smell of iron.  Mycroft didn’t scream.  It was a soundless gasp as his back curled into the armchair, one hand groping for his shoulder as blood poured through his shaking fingers.  Sebastian ejected the spent round, sending the brass casing rolling under his chair as he reloaded.  “Hate politicians,” he muttered.

Mycroft’s breathing was low and fast, trying to keep the red inside his body and failing.  His free hand felt under the table next to him, slid along the wood and stopped as the barrel of the rifle dropped just under his nose.

Sebastian clicked his tongue.  “Don’t think you want to do that, Mister Holmes.  Panic buttons tend to create, well… panic.”  He smirked.  “Can’t think of what I’m liable to do if you were to touch that button… but I don’t imagine the carpet would ever recover.  I’ve heard blood’s awful hard to get out of wool.”

Mycroft swallowed, leaned back in his seat and folded his hands in his lap. 

Sebastian smiled and pulled the gun back in his lap, still trained on the man’s face.  “That’s better.

Mycroft’s eyes never left the former colonel’s.  “What do you want?”

“I’ve already told you,” Sebastian said.  “Sherlock Holmes location.”  He smirked.  “Unless you’d like a matching hole in your other shoulder.”

Mycroft winced, pressed harder against the wound, trying to staunch the bleeding.  “And… what makes you think I  _have_  an answer?”

Without so much as blinking, Sebastian reached into his front pocket and produced his cellphone.  The picture quality was poor, but not so poor as the faces couldn’t be recognized.  Mycroft Holmes speaking with someone who could be no other than the dead consulting detective.  “One of my boys sent that to me a week ago.  I’m going to bet that while Sherlock Holmes isn’t in Vienna any longer, you might know his approximate whereabouts.”

Mycroft swallowed, his expression gone blank again.

Sebastian chuckled.

“Something funny?” Mycroft asked.

“The boss said that was your tell,” Sebastian said, smirking.  “That… facial-reset, he called it.  When you go from some-expression to no-expression.  He was right… it’s almost  _comical_.”

Mycroft’s eyes narrowed.  “You won’t find him, you know.”

Sebastian leaned back in his seat.  “Oh?  What makes you say that?”

“It took me  _months_  to find Sherlock, and he  _wanted_  to be found,” Mycroft said.  “He’s gone to ground.  That photograph is the last you’ll see of him for years.”

Sebastian smiled.  “Is that so?”

“Yes.”

Sebastian’s jaw worked.  “Right.”  He pulled the rifle into the crook of his shoulder, pressed the barrel right up against Mycroft Holmes’s left cheekbone and  _pressed_.  “I’m no good at these things, Mister Holmes.  You’re lying, but I’m not going to sit here and play guessing games and word puzzles with you.  I’m going to count to three… and then I’m going to blow off your head.” 

Mycroft Holmes said nothing.

Sebastian slipped his finger from the trigger guard.  “One.”

“Do you know, Mister Moran, why I will not tell you where my brother is?” Mycroft asked, his voice far-away.  Resigned.

Sebastian’s finger brushed the hair-trigger and he felt electricity race all through his bones.  “Two.”

“Because he’s already died once due to my own negligence,” Mycroft whispered.  “I won’t see my words kill him a second time.”

“Three.”

Mycroft Holmes closed his eyes, lifted his chin and let out a soft breath.

A moment passed.  Then another.

Sebastian Moran kept the gun pressed to Mycroft Holmes face, but did not pull the trigger.  His hands felt tight, cramped and aching.  All it would have taken was a single twitch, and it would have been over.  Scarlet and fistfuls of brain matter all over the flooring.  But there wasn’t.  There was just a man sitting in a chair, bleeding while the other man pressed a gun in his face.

He wouldn’t kill Mycroft Holmes.  Not yet.

But he’d be a liar if he’d said it wouldn’t have eased a load of stress off his mind.

He pulled the rifle away, leaving a dark red ring where the barrel had been pressed against the elder Holmes’s cheekbone.  He smirked.  “You keep one eye on your door, Mister Holmes,” he said, keeping the irritation from his voice, but only just.  “This isn’t over.”

“No,” Mycroft whispered.  “No, I don’t expect it is.”

Sebastian shouldered his rifle, smoothed out his suit and buttoned the coat again as he stood.  He walked to Mycroft Holmes, slipping his finger under the table and pressing the small, white panic-button hidden beneath.  “Might want to get that shoulder of yours looked at, Mister Holmes.  I’m gonna be needing you around a bit longer.”

By the time security arrived in Mycroft Holmes’s private office, the man was long gone.


End file.
